Ottawa Fire Services budget could go up by as much as $13.3 million without any additional services

Ottawa may have to spend as much as $13.3 million more each year on firefighters — without getting any new services — as a result of new provincial legislation meant to benefit low-income earners.

The possible increase is due to how volunteer firefighters — who are considered on-call workers — are paid, and how their pay would change after the Ontario government’s Bill 148 becomes law.

Bill 148, which is more commonly known as the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs act, has been controversial for many of its inclusions, among which is an increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

However, according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the bill also requires material changes to the way on-call workers are paid, which includes volunteer firefighters. The bill would ensure the amount paid to volunteer firefighters would equal the amount paid to full-time firefighters, and would also establish that on-call workers are paid for a minimum number of hours.

“Besides the equal pay provision for volunteer firefighters, there are other provisions that could be very costly to municipalities,” said Lynn Dollin, president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. “We’re taking the position that this was unintentional. (Labour) Minister (Kevin) Flynn has met with us multiple times saying that municipal governments were employers of choice, we were not the intended targets of this bill. We truly believe that they threw their nets wide and captured us, even though we weren’t meant to be captured.”

The bill aims to strengthen legislation to better protect part-time, contract, volunteer or employees on internships. It spells out how those workers are to be scheduled, how much they are to be paid and how many hours they should be paid for during each shift.

According to the bill, volunteer firefighters would require equal pay to full-time permanent firefighters and they would need to be scheduled a minimum of four days in advance of a shift. They also are to be paid a minimum of three-hours wages for each shift they are scheduled, whether they work or not. That last caveat is the one that seems to be the hardest part of the new legislation for municipalities to swallow.

Currently, volunteer firefighters in Ottawa are paid a starting wage of $17 per hour, that goes up to around $22 per hour based on seniority. Volunteers are currently only paid for the hours they work. They clock in when they receive notification of a fire or other emergency and are clocked out when the incident has been dealt with.

According to an Association of Municipalities of Ontario research paper submitted to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs, Bill 148, “would mean that if a volunteer firefighter is not exempted from the proposed changes to on-call pay the cost of volunteer firefighter services will increase to $27,375 per volunteer firefighter per year … without any increase in service to the community.”

Volunteers would be paid for three hours per shift, whether or not they respond to any fires.

The City of Ottawa employs 485 volunteer firefighters, which represents 36 per cent of its firefighting force. There are 858 full-time firefighters employed with the city. Using the estimate provided by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the cost the city may carry to pay its volunteer firefighters under the proposed bill may be as high as $13.3 million per year.

According to last year’s budget, the budget for Ottawa Fire Services was $159 million.

Full-time firefighters in the city are represented by the Ottawa Professional Firefighters Association. Volunteer or part-time firefighters are not unionized and as a result, are not represented by an association. A spokesman for the Ottawa Firefighters Association said he would not comment on Bill 148 as it relates to volunteers.

Diane Deans, councillor for Gloucester-Southgate ward and chair of the city’s Community and Protective Services Committee, was not available for comment on the issue. Deans said she was too busy to comment, but did say the issue is being investigated by the city’s finance and legal departments. The city is in the midst of finalizing its budget for 2018.

Should Bill 148 pass without any exemptions for municipalities, the financial impact could be far greater to cities than just volunteer firefighting budgets. It could affect snow clearing operations, emergency response units, sewage and water workers, municipal airport employees and other jobs that require on-call workers.

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario argued that cities across the province employ 238,000 people and that its members treat employees fairly and as a result, they should be excluded. Last week the association presented its case before the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs.

“They know what we think about it. Let’s put it that way. Now we wait and see what happens. The minister has been very clear, he has given specific examples of areas where employees have been taken advantage of,” said Dollin. “We’re an employer of choice. We have a lot of people applying. We have good pensions, a lot of us have good benefit packages and I don’t believe we were the intended target for this bill.”

However, experts disagree and say that municipalities should be treated like any other employer, regardless of how many people they employ.

Johanna Weststar, a management and organizational studies professor at the University of Western Ontario, said many of the issues the province is currently facing in regards to contract, part-time and volunteer workers have been created by a multitude of exemptions which have been put in place for various reasons over the years. Those exemptions are now being used as loopholes by employers to avoid certain aspects of existing labour laws.

“Some of the major flaws in our current legislation in Ontario is all of the exemptions. There are many, many exemptions that allow businesses of all types to side-step the minimum standards and what that creates is a real patchwork of what applies, when it applies and who does it apply to?” she said. “That has greatly contributed to the state of precarious employment for a lot of people in the province.”

Weststar said one of the themes the province heard repeatedly when consulting on Bill 148 was that exemptions to current labour standards are a real issue when it comes to part-time, contract or volunteer workers. She said people in those positions are often under far more stress and financial duress as they don’t know when their next shift is coming or whether it may be cancelled.

“That kind of uncertainty in the day-to-day makes it really hard for people to plan their lives. Making the argument that you are a good employer and you should be exempt because you pay high wages is side-stepping the point,” said Weststar. “If we don’t level the playing field what good is the law?”

Michael Speers, a spokesman for the Ontario labour ministry, said the ministry is well aware of the concerns that have been raised by municipalities, however he would not comment on what steps the ministry may take in order to address those concerns.

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